8 ms·

Dell's Aero Smartphone: An Embarrassment to Android

87 points by techiediy 16y ago

thehigherlife 16y ago
What do decisions and devices like this one do for the Andriod brand? not a lot of good I would immediately think. This is probably google's biggest problem.
- theBobMcCormick 16y ago
  No, their biggest problem is having so many countries you can't buy apps in yet. I don't this does more than minor damage to the Android brand. Companies like Packard Bell and eMachines make nothing but low quality shitty Windows computers for decades and they didn't really damage the Windows brand. Not saying that Windows has a sparkling reputation mind you, but the things that have damaged their brand have been their own fault really. And in the end, everyone still ends up buying a Windows PC because they're everywhere, at every price point and every form factor.
  - thehigherlife 16y ago
    Windows and Android are not the same platform and buying a computer is a difference experience than buying a mobile phone. Even if I give you that they are the same, The eMachines and Packard Bell still looked and felt the same (from an OS perspective), you could blame the performance on the crappy PC, not the software running on it.
    - theBobMcCormick 16y ago
      In the Windows 3.0 and 3.1 days, they didn't. Almost all the PC manufacturers used to include extensively customized desktop UI's. And man were they awful. Edit: Here's a link to screenshots for the custom UI shell that Packard Bell used to ship with Win3.1 and Win95. Prepare for the horror! :-) http://toastytech.com/guis/pbnav35.html http://toastytech.com/guis/pbnav35.html
glhaynes 16y ago
I understand handset makers not providing timely upgrades (who wants to spend engineering/support $s on software upgrades for a sale you already made to a customer [really, a customer of your customer] who probably won't hold any loyalty to your brand either way), but why are so many new devices coming out with really old versions of Android? I've never really seen anything like that before... PC makers are ready to go with Windows Next the day it's out.
- nkassis 16y ago
  Because they spend a ton of money on crap "enhancements" to the original UI (except for HTC sense which I don't really care about, all others I've seen are crap). If they just released plain Android they wouldn't have anything to differentiate themselves. The problem with their plan is that they suck at software development and their enhancements make the phones worse and outdated.
  - glhaynes 16y ago
    I suppose you're right. Seems strange for those things to apparently be so badly broken by OS upgrades that they need months/years to fix. You'd think the savings on support costs alone would be substantial from not having to support older, presumably buggier, versions of the OS. Though I suppose most of the support for these devices comes from the telcos not from the handset makers. Anyway, here's a radical and not necessarily good idea: what if the base "Android" release didn't have a launcher/etc at all, leaving what's commonly called "the UI" entirely up to handset makers. Sure, spin off the existing launcher as a separate open source project, but make it just one competitor among many. If diversity in this area is good and manufacturers really do want to differentiate themselves, make that a core part of the platform. It's not like it's that expensive to write a launcher.
  - tvon 16y ago
    Hardware manufacturers don't see themselves as Android distributors, they don't want to compete to see who can make the best home for vanilla Android. They see Android as a jumping off point, not a final product.
aphistic 16y ago
I'm not surprised. When I first found out Dell was re-entering the "small devices" sector I decided I was going to stay far away from anything they produced. I was burned on the Axim X50v and I'm not going to make the same mistake twice. It was for close to the same reason as mentioned in the article as well (outdated system software). I bought it on the promise of an upgrade from WinMo 5 to WinMo 6 and while they delivered on the promise of WinMo 6 it was many months behind the expected release date and was so buggy and slow that it was unusable. Though that may have been the fault of WinMo more than the device itself. They never did release an update to fix any of it, either.
raganwald 16y ago
I was going to write that Android needs a Dictator that lays down the law with minions and partners alike, especially to enforce a "No Devices That Suck" policy. But honestly, does Google care? If Dell wants to ship a device that sucks, let HTC prove this is a terrible idea by eating Dell's lunch. If Android 2.2 is better than Android 1.5, let customers vote for 2.2 with their wallets. Of course, there is always the risk that a customer who hates a Dell Aero will replace it with an iPhone instead of an HTC, ...
- nkassis 16y ago
  Well, the largest problem I can see is that it's hard for customers to know what version of the OS comes in the phone they want. Google owns the Android trademark, they could just prevent anyone who isn't complying with certain guidelines from advertising the name Android. They could call it whatever they want, just not Android.
  - SandB0x 16y ago
    Exactly. Just as raganwald suggests on his last line - people will be stung by their experience and simply buy an iPhone next time. Crap like this damages the whole Android brand. Nobody wants to hear "Oh, well you bought this specific instance X of Android on phone Y. That particular one is no good, but it's your fault because you didn't spend a week reading detailed product reviews on Ars Technica before buying your phone." It's entirely possible that sales will nosedive after the current round of phone contracts/plans are up, as most Android owners are on their first model. (an Android user)
    - sprout 16y ago
      People aren't stupid. They can distinguish between Froyo and Cupcake. It's even got a clear analogue in the XP/Vista/7 debacle. Or for those who lived through it, Cupcake is the Windows 3.11 to Froyo's Windows XP, or something like that. People do in fact get that there are different versions of software. If you're aiming at people who don't... they aren't going to know an iPhone from a Nexus One anyway.
whalesalad 16y ago
Everything Dell is doing is Android 1.5... they're WAY behind the curve. People need to wake the hell up and realize that the most important part of their devices is the EXPERIENCE, not the bells and whistles. They won't even remotely be able to compete on the experience front without Android 2.2.
draebek 16y ago
Are there many new applications that require the use of Android 2.x? It seems to me that could be a serious problem for "Android": consumer buys new Dell phone running "Android," finds they can't run half the cool apps their friends' EVOs can because they've got some old version of Android, consumer now hates Android.
- mike-cardwell 16y ago
  Flash requires 2.2 iirc.
- ydant 16y ago
  My understanding is that the difference between 1.5 and 1.6 was huge in terms of what it provides in API/functionality and a lot of apps target 1.6 as a minimum as a result. Probably a lot more than target 2.1 or 2.2. 2.0 almost doesn't exist, it was upgraded so quickly on the devices that had it. My experience is that if you're on 2.1 you can run most of what's on the market. I haven't used 1.5 or 1.6 enough to know about them (other than technically), but I wouldn't be surprised if 1.5 can't run a large chunk of the market and 1.6 probably gets excluded from a lot of cool stuff, too.
  - theBobMcCormick 16y ago
    One of the major differences between 1.5 and 1.6 is that 1.6 added support for different screen densities. That's pretty major. If you only target 1.6 and above with your app, it's trivial to support different resolutions and screen densities. It looks like it'd be tricky to support 1.5 and be resolution independent. I don't know for sure though.
- jsz0 16y ago
  Most of Google's own first party apps require at least 1.6 -- these devices can't even run Google Navigation for example.
napierzaza 16y ago
Whoa, I thought there were issues with the sprawl of hardware that has come out, and the phones which can't upgrade to new OSes. But now we find out that you can't even trust a NEW phone to have the newest OS? This is as bad or worse than the PC industry. But is this because of Google? Are they manufacturers starting projects for ver x.x and then only to find out after 6 months of work that the new OS is not compatible with the software/hardware they've developed? Is there information on the road-map to the development of specifications? Or are these companies just aiming low?
BrandonDC 16y ago
I find this type of corporate cluelessness fascinating. When a product like this is released, it feels as though the company ignored everything; the market, the competing products and the customers. How does this happen? Is it Dell's lacklustre R&D funding? Poor leadership? Is the team who developed this product made up of soccer moms who don't know anything about smartphones? All of the above?
dannyr 16y ago
This comes with the territory of having an open-source OS. I don't like what Dell is doing but they are damaging their own brand more than they are damaging Android. But before we get too hung up on having the latest version of Android running on our phones, let us put things in perspective. I do care a lot about having the latest version of Android. But I'm like you guys, we're plugged in to the tech scene. We love our apps, the coolest and latest UI, etc. But for the rest of the country, a survey of my friends suggest that most of them do not care. My roommate just bought a Palm Pre. There are very few apps in the market. But guess what, my roommate is very happy with his phone. He said it's the best phone he's ever had. I was happy with my Android phone even when my G1 was on 1.5. I'm glad that I upgraded to a Nexus One and I'm now on 2.2 but I never felt that 1.5 was a piece of crap. My observation with the tech community is that we think we are mainstream. We're not. I don't know many fellow geeks that play Farmville but you know what, it's got 100+ million users. So before we start raising hell about having different versions of Android out there, we should consider that maybe the mainstream users do not really care.
- tvon 16y ago
  > So before we start raising hell about having different versions of Android out there, we should consider that maybe the mainstream users do not really care. The problem is that it exacerbates the fragmentation situation for developers, or at least that's how I read it.
- jsz0 16y ago
  If they were shipping 1.6 or 2.0 I might agree but 1.5 has a ton of compatibility problems these days. You can't even run Google Navigation on it. That's something the average user might notice.
  - mike-cardwell 16y ago
    My G1 is running 1.6. I thought this excluded me from getting Google Navigation, so was intending to upgrade at the end of my contract. But then one day I got an update and navigation came with it. I'm not entirely sure why I would upgrade now? I don't want to sign up for another 18 month contract if all I'm going to get for it is Flash, voice recognition and a shinier interface. So I've gone PAYG and saved myself about £30/month. When the next useful feature comes along which doesn't work on 1.6, then I'll upgrade. Or if an Android phone is released with considerably improved battery life.
acon 16y ago
Sure, selling devices with outdated versions of Android is bad, but to me it is worse that they don't release updates for existing phones in a timely manner. If I buy a phone I want it to feel fun at least until the contract runs out, which means 18-24 months. If my friends gets new phones running better software, my fun is reduced and my next phone is more likely to be an iPhone, where I know I'll get timely updates.
- QE2 16y ago
  > my next phone is more likely to be an iPhone, where I know I'll get timely updates. One significant update per year, on which Apple has disabled half of the features because you don't have the latest model?
awe 16y ago
Embarrassing? I'd call it growing pains. Google allows manufacturers free reign and once the UI has reached a certain point I'd say that's when Android will start to get locked down. Too early for that though.
S_A_P 16y ago
I think what this really says is that Dell is happy to release average, "me too" type products that really add no value to the market segment. I dont see that the major PC vendors carry alot of weight in this segment anyway, so why the mediocre device? Seems to me that Dell has been caught completely off guard by mobile devices and still really doesnt have an answer.
- protomyth 16y ago
  Dell has a big enterprise sales force. How long before they start pushing some "all-in-one" purchases that bring this phone (or the next version) to the enterprise?
Potter 16y ago
"This trend is precisely why I've argued that it's time for the baked-in Android UI to die." Google seem to be taking the opposite approach to solving this problem. Rumours are that the next major release is set to include significant UI enhancements. If the UI is good enough, manufacturers won't bother rolling their own. Well that's the theory, but they still need to differentiate somehow...
swilliams 16y ago
At the time, I mocked Verizon for branding their Android devices as "Droid," but now I think it's a little brilliant. Companies like Dell and anyone else can release crap, and it won't damage Verizon's brand, since most of the public doesn't know that they have the same OS underneath.
brianobush 16y ago
I am still running android 1.5 on my phone (the Cliq) - since T-mobile and motorola are a bit slow to update their older platforms. However, it still does what I need - browsing, email, calling. Bleeding edge usually add much more functionality, though I would sure like to try out the new voice activation features in 2.2

87 points by techiediy 16y ago

What do decisions and devices like this one do for the Andriod brand? not a lot of good I would immediately think. This is probably google's biggest problem.

theBobMcCormick 16y ago
No, their biggest problem is having so many countries you can't buy apps in yet. I don't this does more than minor damage to the Android brand. Companies like Packard Bell and eMachines make nothing but low quality shitty Windows computers for decades and they didn't really damage the Windows brand. Not saying that Windows has a sparkling reputation mind you, but the things that have damaged their brand have been their own fault really. And in the end, everyone still ends up buying a Windows PC because they're everywhere, at every price point and every form factor.
- thehigherlife 16y ago
  Windows and Android are not the same platform and buying a computer is a difference experience than buying a mobile phone. Even if I give you that they are the same, The eMachines and Packard Bell still looked and felt the same (from an OS perspective), you could blame the performance on the crappy PC, not the software running on it.
  - theBobMcCormick 16y ago
    In the Windows 3.0 and 3.1 days, they didn't. Almost all the PC manufacturers used to include extensively customized desktop UI's. And man were they awful. Edit: Here's a link to screenshots for the custom UI shell that Packard Bell used to ship with Win3.1 and Win95. Prepare for the horror! :-) http://toastytech.com/guis/pbnav35.html http://toastytech.com/guis/pbnav35.html

glhaynes 16y ago

I understand handset makers not providing timely upgrades (who wants to spend engineering/support $s on software upgrades for a sale you already made to a customer [really, a customer of your customer] who probably won't hold any loyalty to your brand either way), but why are so many new devices coming out with really old versions of Android? I've never really seen anything like that before... PC makers are ready to go with Windows Next the day it's out.

nkassis 16y ago
Because they spend a ton of money on crap "enhancements" to the original UI (except for HTC sense which I don't really care about, all others I've seen are crap). If they just released plain Android they wouldn't have anything to differentiate themselves. The problem with their plan is that they suck at software development and their enhancements make the phones worse and outdated.
- glhaynes 16y ago
  I suppose you're right. Seems strange for those things to apparently be so badly broken by OS upgrades that they need months/years to fix. You'd think the savings on support costs alone would be substantial from not having to support older, presumably buggier, versions of the OS. Though I suppose most of the support for these devices comes from the telcos not from the handset makers. Anyway, here's a radical and not necessarily good idea: what if the base "Android" release didn't have a launcher/etc at all, leaving what's commonly called "the UI" entirely up to handset makers. Sure, spin off the existing launcher as a separate open source project, but make it just one competitor among many. If diversity in this area is good and manufacturers really do want to differentiate themselves, make that a core part of the platform. It's not like it's that expensive to write a launcher.
- tvon 16y ago
  Hardware manufacturers don't see themselves as Android distributors, they don't want to compete to see who can make the best home for vanilla Android. They see Android as a jumping off point, not a final product.

aphistic 16y ago

I'm not surprised. When I first found out Dell was re-entering the "small devices" sector I decided I was going to stay far away from anything they produced. I was burned on the Axim X50v and I'm not going to make the same mistake twice. It was for close to the same reason as mentioned in the article as well (outdated system software). I bought it on the promise of an upgrade from WinMo 5 to WinMo 6 and while they delivered on the promise of WinMo 6 it was many months behind the expected release date and was so buggy and slow that it was unusable. Though that may have been the fault of WinMo more than the device itself. They never did release an update to fix any of it, either.

raganwald 16y ago

I was going to write that Android needs a Dictator that lays down the law with minions and partners alike, especially to enforce a "No Devices That Suck" policy. But honestly, does Google care? If Dell wants to ship a device that sucks, let HTC prove this is a terrible idea by eating Dell's lunch. If Android 2.2 is better than Android 1.5, let customers vote for 2.2 with their wallets. Of course, there is always the risk that a customer who hates a Dell Aero will replace it with an iPhone instead of an HTC, ...

nkassis 16y ago
Well, the largest problem I can see is that it's hard for customers to know what version of the OS comes in the phone they want. Google owns the Android trademark, they could just prevent anyone who isn't complying with certain guidelines from advertising the name Android. They could call it whatever they want, just not Android.
- SandB0x 16y ago
  Exactly. Just as raganwald suggests on his last line - people will be stung by their experience and simply buy an iPhone next time. Crap like this damages the whole Android brand. Nobody wants to hear "Oh, well you bought this specific instance X of Android on phone Y. That particular one is no good, but it's your fault because you didn't spend a week reading detailed product reviews on Ars Technica before buying your phone." It's entirely possible that sales will nosedive after the current round of phone contracts/plans are up, as most Android owners are on their first model. (an Android user)
  - sprout 16y ago
    People aren't stupid. They can distinguish between Froyo and Cupcake. It's even got a clear analogue in the XP/Vista/7 debacle. Or for those who lived through it, Cupcake is the Windows 3.11 to Froyo's Windows XP, or something like that. People do in fact get that there are different versions of software. If you're aiming at people who don't... they aren't going to know an iPhone from a Nexus One anyway.

whalesalad 16y ago

Everything Dell is doing is Android 1.5... they're WAY behind the curve. People need to wake the hell up and realize that the most important part of their devices is the EXPERIENCE, not the bells and whistles. They won't even remotely be able to compete on the experience front without Android 2.2.

draebek 16y ago

Are there many new applications that require the use of Android 2.x? It seems to me that could be a serious problem for "Android": consumer buys new Dell phone running "Android," finds they can't run half the cool apps their friends' EVOs can because they've got some old version of Android, consumer now hates Android.

mike-cardwell 16y ago
Flash requires 2.2 iirc.
ydant 16y ago
My understanding is that the difference between 1.5 and 1.6 was huge in terms of what it provides in API/functionality and a lot of apps target 1.6 as a minimum as a result. Probably a lot more than target 2.1 or 2.2. 2.0 almost doesn't exist, it was upgraded so quickly on the devices that had it. My experience is that if you're on 2.1 you can run most of what's on the market. I haven't used 1.5 or 1.6 enough to know about them (other than technically), but I wouldn't be surprised if 1.5 can't run a large chunk of the market and 1.6 probably gets excluded from a lot of cool stuff, too.
- theBobMcCormick 16y ago
  One of the major differences between 1.5 and 1.6 is that 1.6 added support for different screen densities. That's pretty major. If you only target 1.6 and above with your app, it's trivial to support different resolutions and screen densities. It looks like it'd be tricky to support 1.5 and be resolution independent. I don't know for sure though.
jsz0 16y ago
Most of Google's own first party apps require at least 1.6 -- these devices can't even run Google Navigation for example.

napierzaza 16y ago

Whoa, I thought there were issues with the sprawl of hardware that has come out, and the phones which can't upgrade to new OSes. But now we find out that you can't even trust a NEW phone to have the newest OS? This is as bad or worse than the PC industry. But is this because of Google? Are they manufacturers starting projects for ver x.x and then only to find out after 6 months of work that the new OS is not compatible with the software/hardware they've developed? Is there information on the road-map to the development of specifications? Or are these companies just aiming low?

BrandonDC 16y ago

I find this type of corporate cluelessness fascinating. When a product like this is released, it feels as though the company ignored everything; the market, the competing products and the customers. How does this happen? Is it Dell's lacklustre R&D funding? Poor leadership? Is the team who developed this product made up of soccer moms who don't know anything about smartphones? All of the above?

dannyr 16y ago

This comes with the territory of having an open-source OS. I don't like what Dell is doing but they are damaging their own brand more than they are damaging Android. But before we get too hung up on having the latest version of Android running on our phones, let us put things in perspective. I do care a lot about having the latest version of Android. But I'm like you guys, we're plugged in to the tech scene. We love our apps, the coolest and latest UI, etc. But for the rest of the country, a survey of my friends suggest that most of them do not care. My roommate just bought a Palm Pre. There are very few apps in the market. But guess what, my roommate is very happy with his phone. He said it's the best phone he's ever had. I was happy with my Android phone even when my G1 was on 1.5. I'm glad that I upgraded to a Nexus One and I'm now on 2.2 but I never felt that 1.5 was a piece of crap. My observation with the tech community is that we think we are mainstream. We're not. I don't know many fellow geeks that play Farmville but you know what, it's got 100+ million users. So before we start raising hell about having different versions of Android out there, we should consider that maybe the mainstream users do not really care.

tvon 16y ago
> So before we start raising hell about having different versions of Android out there, we should consider that maybe the mainstream users do not really care. The problem is that it exacerbates the fragmentation situation for developers, or at least that's how I read it.
jsz0 16y ago
If they were shipping 1.6 or 2.0 I might agree but 1.5 has a ton of compatibility problems these days. You can't even run Google Navigation on it. That's something the average user might notice.
- mike-cardwell 16y ago
  My G1 is running 1.6. I thought this excluded me from getting Google Navigation, so was intending to upgrade at the end of my contract. But then one day I got an update and navigation came with it. I'm not entirely sure why I would upgrade now? I don't want to sign up for another 18 month contract if all I'm going to get for it is Flash, voice recognition and a shinier interface. So I've gone PAYG and saved myself about £30/month. When the next useful feature comes along which doesn't work on 1.6, then I'll upgrade. Or if an Android phone is released with considerably improved battery life.

acon 16y ago

Sure, selling devices with outdated versions of Android is bad, but to me it is worse that they don't release updates for existing phones in a timely manner. If I buy a phone I want it to feel fun at least until the contract runs out, which means 18-24 months. If my friends gets new phones running better software, my fun is reduced and my next phone is more likely to be an iPhone, where I know I'll get timely updates.

QE2 16y ago
> my next phone is more likely to be an iPhone, where I know I'll get timely updates. One significant update per year, on which Apple has disabled half of the features because you don't have the latest model?

awe 16y ago

Embarrassing? I'd call it growing pains. Google allows manufacturers free reign and once the UI has reached a certain point I'd say that's when Android will start to get locked down. Too early for that though.

S_A_P 16y ago

I think what this really says is that Dell is happy to release average, "me too" type products that really add no value to the market segment. I dont see that the major PC vendors carry alot of weight in this segment anyway, so why the mediocre device? Seems to me that Dell has been caught completely off guard by mobile devices and still really doesnt have an answer.

protomyth 16y ago
Dell has a big enterprise sales force. How long before they start pushing some "all-in-one" purchases that bring this phone (or the next version) to the enterprise?

Potter 16y ago

"This trend is precisely why I've argued that it's time for the baked-in Android UI to die." Google seem to be taking the opposite approach to solving this problem. Rumours are that the next major release is set to include significant UI enhancements. If the UI is good enough, manufacturers won't bother rolling their own. Well that's the theory, but they still need to differentiate somehow...

swilliams 16y ago

At the time, I mocked Verizon for branding their Android devices as "Droid," but now I think it's a little brilliant. Companies like Dell and anyone else can release crap, and it won't damage Verizon's brand, since most of the public doesn't know that they have the same OS underneath.

brianobush 16y ago

I am still running android 1.5 on my phone (the Cliq) - since T-mobile and motorola are a bit slow to update their older platforms. However, it still does what I need - browsing, email, calling. Bleeding edge usually add much more functionality, though I would sure like to try out the new voice activation features in 2.2